Devandra

Devandra Montrose woke from an oddly restless slumber knowing that Eleanora was going to call on her. This meant she would definitely do her receiving in the kitchen, where it was more comfortable, and where she could enjoy the aroma of freshly baking candied gingerbread (for her younger daughter’s school bake sale) while she met with the master of the Echo Park coven—of which Dev was a member.

Usually when she was going to do a reading, she set up shop in the converted garage, aka The Mucho Man Cave, that her partner, Freddy, used to host their popular Echo Park Weekend Bar—and the occasional weeknight poker game for his crew of guy friends—but today was different. Today would be about coven business, and, with its cedar-lined walls and industrial-grade forest-green carpeting that stank of peanuts, cigar smoke, and stale beer, The Mucho Man Cave was not the most appropriate setting for that.

Besides, The Mucho Man Cave always seemed a little sad during the week when there were no neighbors crowding around its homemade tiki bar, sipping cold beer as they discussed neighborhood gossip and flirted with one another.

Of course, the old garage always perked up when Dev used it for one of her readings, her saints’ candles and burnished iron censer of smoky sandalwood incense giving the space a rich honey glow and transforming it from a part-time bar and den of poker-playing iniquity into a mysterious world of magical tarot. Though there was always a faint tinge of stale beer underneath the earthy sandalwood, if you knew to smell for it.

Well, if she’d guessed correctly, then The Mucho Man Cave was safe from her machinations today. Eleanora was already more than well acquainted with the spirit world and would have no need for the trappings of the trade, the things she normally employed to make her clientele feel as though they were magically slipping beyond the veil.

But first there were two children to get to school, a client to consult with on strawberry icing, and a dog that needed a walk before Dev was finally free to get out her well-worn Rider-Waites—the slick yellow cards and their whimsical figures more appealing to her than some of the darker, edgier decks—and prepare herself mentally for the surprise reading.

Everyone knew face value was not what you got with tarot cards. Intuition was the name of the game when it came to fortune-telling—Dev’s specialty—and either you were born with the chops or you weren’t. Nothing analytical or logical about what she did; it was all in the old gut.

Though her children swore up and down that Dev possessed untold psychic abilities, she was not gifted with telepathy, clairvoyance, or any of the other psychic phenomena they ascribed to her. Not that she let them in on this secret. She needed all the help she could get raising two wily, intelligent little girls—and allowing them to believe their mother had eyes in the back of her head could only help her cause. Sadly, divination was her only gift—which meant she was forced to use good old-fashioned logic to make educated guesses about everything else. In point of fact, she expected her visitor was going to be Eleanora Eames, not because she’d had any portent-bearing dreams but because Eleanora had called Dev’s number twice the day before, refusing to leave a message on either attempt. She assumed her friend was well aware of the caller ID feature and just didn’t give a damn about leaving hang-ups on people’s answering machines—which made Dev think a lecture on the finer points of twenty-first-century telephone etiquette might be in order.

While she waited for her visitor to arrive, Dev set a battered copper kettle on the front eye of the white porcelain O’Keefe and Merritt stove and turned the flame to high, spooning Russian tea into two of her favorite lapis-blue earthenware mugs. The day before, in an attempt to get herself into an autumnal mood, she’d made the first batch of the family favorite fall/winter tea, but now the little potbellied jar full of sugar, Tang, cinnamon, clove, and instant tea mixture sat on the butcher-block countertop looking lost and forlorn in its spot between the aluminum mixer and a vintage owl-shaped cookie jar.

Maybe she wasn’t getting the spooky October vibe yet because the house still felt light and airy from its summer incarnation. Spying the row of beige seashells up on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, the ones the girls had collected during a family trip to Laguna Beach in June, Dev decided clearing out the summer bits and bobs would go a long way to getting her into a fall state of mind. Tonight when Freddy got home from work, she’d ask him to drag down the boxes of autumn-themed decorations from the attic, so she could get the house ready for Halloween. She knew her daughters, Marji and Ginny, would fall all over themselves to help her turn the house over—and Freddy was always down for getting into the spooky spirit, setting up a life-size replica of a human skeleton (bought at the yard sale of one of their neighbors, who was a retired biology professor) to sit at the tiki bar and scare the guests who frequented The Mucho Man Cave.

She would personally oversee the hanging of the Halloween pièce de résistance: her great-great-grandmother Lucretia’s mourning wreath.

When placed above the mantelpiece of the sitting room fireplace, the horseshoe-shaped wreath—mounted to a disc of muted mother-of-pearl and set behind glass—was a real showstopper. Fashioned by Lucretia’s daughters when she died in 1891, it was an eerie sight: one large six-petal flower and four smaller three-petal flowers intricately woven from the strands of Lucretia’s own famous raven hair.

Over the years, the mourning wreath had been handed down through the Montrose family from eldest daughter to eldest daughter—with Dev being the latest in the line of succession. When Dev’s older daughter, Marjoram, came of age at eighteen, the wreath would pass into her keeping and Dev would no longer be responsible for it. Though she’d be sad to see it go—handling the memento mori always gave her a visceral thrill—she was proud of the keepsake’s lineage and pleased that her daughter would be part of the long line of women who’d looked after it.

Startled by the near-simultaneous yip of the teakettle and the ring of the doorbell, Dev turned off the gas and trundled over to the mudroom, gratified to see Eleanora’s silhouette shifting behind the café-curtained window. She’d been right about the identity of her visitor.

“I thought you might be dropping by,” Dev said, holding the back door open so her friend could enter.

There was a whoosh as the wind tried to follow Eleanora inside, but Dev closed the door firmly behind them, leaving the wind no recourse but to bang the storm door open and shut in protest.

“Wicked wind. Just started up out of the blue as I was walking over,” Eleanora said, shrugging off her scarlet Windbreaker and hanging it up on one of the wooden pegs that protruded from the beadboard wall.

Dev frowned as a sense of dread so palpable she could taste it washed over her. The short strawberry-blond hairs on the back of her neck prickled to life, and her legs felt unreliable beneath her as the room began to spin. She leaned against the wall, using it to hold herself up, her stomach lurching. She bit her lip hard, the abruptness of the pain taking the edge off her nausea, but even when she closed her eyes, the spinning sensation continued.

Get hold of yourself, she thought, tasting blood on her tongue. You control your body, not the other way around.

Mustering her strength, she pushed the bad feeling away and forced her eyes open. As she did, she found her gaze settling on Eleanora’s scarlet Windbreaker where it hung twisted on its peg in between the shiny primary yellow of Marji and Ginny’s raincoats.

“I see you already have the cards out,” she heard Eleanora saying as she strode past Dev into the kitchen.

As soon as Eleanora crossed the threshold separating the mudroom from the rest of the house, the hum of ambient noise dropped out, replaced by a weighty silence interrupted only by the rise and fall of Dev’s own shallow breathing. A halo of darkness encircled her peripheral vision, limiting her view until all she could see was the scarlet of Eleanora’s Windbreaker, so deep and red and pulsing with life it resembled the ragged flesh of a still-beating heart. Confused, she tried to tear her eyes away from the sight, but her gaze merely slid down to the jacket’s cuff. There she spied a single droplet of glistening liquid, suspended from the cuff’s edge like a translucent red jewel.

Dev watched as it grew in size, liquid from the sodden jacket sluicing down like dozens of small tributaries heading toward the ocean, feeding the droplet until it was so heavy that gravity couldn’t hold it anymore, and it plummeted to Earth.

Strange, Dev thought, her eyes free now to drift over to the window, I didn’t realize it was raining.

But it wasn’t raining—at least not yet. Outside, the sky had grown gray and swollen with the promise of rain, but this promise had not yet been kept.

It’s in the blood.

The phrase resonated in her brain, unbidden, and she shivered.

She returned her gaze to the nylon Windbreaker but was unsurprised to find it no longer nestled in between the shiny yellow raincoats. In its place, a scarlet arc of arterial blood had been splashed across the mudroom wall, the viscous liquid dripping down the beadboard and onto the floor, where it pooled in a thick circle. Dev swallowed, her mouth dry as old bone, but she didn’t panic, just lifted her eyes from the circle of dark liquid on the floor and once more saw the twisted folds of Eleanora’s now-dry Windbreaker.

She blinked—sure her eyes were playing tricks on her . . . or were they? She shuddered, realizing the vision for what it was: an omen of very, very bad things to come.

“Are you all right?”

Eleanora’s voice startled Dev, and she jumped.

“I just saw . . .” she said, her words trailing off as she turned around to face the older woman, who was standing in the doorway, leaning her gaunt body against the polished white doorframe.

“What did you see?” Eleanora asked, her bloodless lips compressed into a thin line.

“I . . .” Dev began, but faltered as her words failed her. She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It was . . . bad, whatever it was. Blood—”

“You saw blood?” Eleanora asked, and Dev nodded.

“Blood, on the wall, by the kids’ raincoats. I felt it, too, inside me—and this phrase keeps repeating in my head: It’s in the blood.”

Eleanora took a deep breath and visibly relaxed.

“What?” Dev asked. “What does it mean?”

“I’ve told Lyse that I’m dying, and she’s come home. That’s what you were seeing. The die is cast.”

“I’m glad you’ve done it,” Dev said. “Does she know anything about us yet, about the coven—”

“Not a thing,” Eleanora said. “I’ve kept all of it from her for so long that it feels strange to finally tell her. I wanted to give her the freedom to go live her own life for as long as I could, but now I need her. The time has come for Lyse to learn who and what we are. I’ve already spoken to Arrabelle and we’ll perform the induction ritual tonight. She’s going to let the others know.”

Dev was surprised.

“Tonight?”

“We’re running out of time, Devandra.” Eleanora sighed. “You read Marie-Faith’s last letter. You know what it means. Why she sent Daniela to us. Things are speeding up and when I die, you will need the fifth. You’ll need Lyse’s help.”

“Yes, of course,” Dev said. “Freddy has a poker game tonight, but I’ll see if he can feed the girls first . . .”

“It’s not a question of if, Devandra,” Eleanora said, “but when. Those who betrayed Marie-Faith will come after us and anyone else who stands in their way. They want what we are protecting, and they will do anything to get it.”

As if this answered everything and left no need for further explanation, Eleanora turned on her heel and made her way back to the kitchen. Dev stood alone in the mudroom pondering her friend’s last words. She knew Eleanora was right—even if she didn’t want to believe it.

It’s in the blood.

The phrase sang in her brain again, and Dev found herself repeating it under her breath as she returned to the kitchen, where she found Eleanora standing by the stove, looking expectantly at the teakettle.

“The kettle’s hot. Shall I pour us a cup?”

“I’ll do it,” Dev said, taking the kettle and adding hot water to the mugs before transferring them to the table. “Hope Russian tea is all right?”

“Fine,” Eleanora said, carefully settling herself into one of the yellow linen spindle-backed chairs and gently resting her bony elbows on the damask tablecloth.

Dev opened a cabinet and took down a tin of homemade sugar cookies, setting the tin along with two chipped blue plates onto the table. Then she took her seat opposite Eleanora.

She’s lost more weight, Dev thought as she watched Eleanora retrieve a cookie—a heart-shaped one with white icing—and hold it in her palm, surveying it. She doubted her friend would eat it. These days Eleanora’s appetite was small to the point of being nonexistent, but at least she made a show of trying to eat. It meant she was still fighting the good fight.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Eleanora said, raising a silvery eyebrow. “I’m not one of those old cats you keep. I’m not gonna go disappearing under the house just because my appetite’s a bit off.”

“You’re the most blunt person I’ve ever known,” Dev replied. “And how would you know what I was thinking, anyway?”

“Oh, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re an open book as far as I’m concerned,” Eleanora said, taking a tentative sip of her tea. “And I may be dying, but I’m not ready to be fitted for my coffin just yet. Lots of things to do before then.”

“Well, I wouldn’t dream of burying an old bitch before her time,” Dev said, grinning at the tartness of her words. Eleanora always brought out her snarky side. One of the things she enjoyed best about their relationship.

“You may think you have a calling for the cards, Devandra, but this is where your true talent lies,” Eleanora said, indicating the tea and iced sugar cookies.

Eleanora was right. Dev definitely wasn’t your traditional fortune-teller—as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t make her living sowing the seeds of fate but by running a small wedding cake business out of her backyard guesthouse/bakery.

“Don’t tell Freddy and the kids,” Dev said, laughing. “They think I’m Carrie come to life.”

“Ha!” Eleanora cackled, setting her tea down. “I bet they do. I bet they do.”

Eleanora was a fan of Dev’s daughters, Marji and Ginny, and never acted put upon (like a few others Dev could name) when Dev told anecdotes about her family life. For their part, the girls loved their prickly old Great-Auntie E dearly. They were forever asking to visit Great-Auntie E’s magic house where “the big goldfish” lived. The koi pond and red-lacquered wooden footbridge that spanned it made up the vast majority of Eleanora’s front yard, along with a well-tended garden filled with fruit and vegetables the whole year long. All these things together meant her house was a lightning rod for the neighborhood children, including Dev’s girls.

“Speaking of the cards,” Dev said, picking up the deck from the table, her touch instantly warming the cards.

“Let’s not speak of them. Let’s let them speak to us,” Eleanora replied.

“Isn’t that what we always do?” Dev said, and then, more circumspect: “And would you like a straight reading? See what the cards say of their own volition, or are we shaping things by asking a few questions?”

“Only one question,” Eleanora said, and with a press of her thumb, she broke her cookie into pieces, shards of iced sugar and flour skidding across her plate.

“A simple five-card spread should be pretty elucidating,” Dev said, and began to separate out the Major Arcana from the rest of the deck, shuffling only these cards before setting them on the table in front of Eleanora.

“Do you have the question in your mind?” Dev asked.

Eleanora nodded, the light hitting her head in such a way that Dev could see pale pink scalp through the thinning salt and pepper of her friend’s pixie cut—a haircut that should only have worked on a younger woman but somehow suited her better than long hair ever had. Dev wanted to cry at her frailness. But since death was not something Dev enjoyed thinking about, she quickly turned to the task at hand:

“Okeydoke, now hold the question in the front of your mind and think of a number between one and twenty-two—”

“Wait,” Eleanora said, holding up her hand for Dev to stop. “Don’t you want to know my question?”

Dev pursed her lips.

“There’s no need—”

“But I want to tell you,” Eleanora said, reaching over and squeezing Dev’s wrist. “Is that a better way of saying that I trust you and that your input is important to me?”

The statement startled Dev. Eleanora had never shared anything so intimate with her before—and especially nothing about their own relationship.

“I know I get tetchy and short-tempered, but I don’t want you to think it ever has anything to do with you personally. You know that, don’t you?”

“I, well . . .” Dev said, not sure what she felt.

“Arrabelle tells me I’m too hard on you, that I expect too much,” Eleanora continued. “If I get impatient, it’s only because I feel safe with you. That the love I feel for you and the rest of our blood sisters transcends friendship. That you are family to me.”

Dev was too stunned to say a word, but she did feel her eyes getting moist. “Oh, stop it,” she said, trying not to get so overemotional that she scared Eleanora away. “You’ve got me tearing up like a baby.”

“I didn’t mean . . . I just wanted you to know before—” Eleanora began, stricken.

“Stop, it’s lovely,” Dev said, waving Eleanora’s words away. “Now tell me your question before I really start sobbing.”

Eleanora nodded, looking a tad uncomfortable with Dev’s excess of emotion. She took a long breath, as if she were nervous about saying the words out loud.

“Will Lyse succeed me as master of the Echo Park coven? Is she the next in line, as Hessika foretold?”

Dev froze, her hands reaching for the cards. Hessika had been the Echo Park coven’s last Dream Keeper, and upon her death, there hadn’t been another to fill her place. The art of Dream Keeping was a dying one—and soon it would be as though the talent had never existed, at all. Not a single Dream Keeper had been born during the last fifty years, and the few who remained were long past their prime.

But what a Dream Keeper dreamed was law, and if Hessika had written of this succession in the coven’s Dream Journal, then Lyse would follow Eleanora. No matter how hard Arrabelle and the others protested it.

“But I thought Arrabelle . . . ?” Dev asked before she could stop herself.

Eleanora shook her head. “It was never Arrabelle. Whatever she thought, the right was never hers.”

Dev tried to remove her own personal feelings from the next question, but Arrabelle was her friend and no matter what Eleanora said now, the others had always taken it for granted that Arrabelle would be the one to succeed her.

“Why was it never hers? She’s always been the one you relied on most—”

“I don’t make the rules—but I am compelled to follow them,” Eleanora said, before adding more pointedly: “Just as you are.”

Continuing down this line of questioning was moot. Dev would just have to see what the cards had to say.

“A number, please,” Dev said. “Whatever first comes to mind.”

“Seven,” Eleanora replied, without hesitation.

Dev counted out seven cards and placed The Fool—one of her favorites—into the first position of the spread. There was something poignant about the naïveté of The Fool’s golden face, the way the sun hung above him, without judgment, even though it could see how precariously close its charge stood to the cliff’s edge.

“The Fool, eh?” Eleanora murmured to herself. Then she said to Dev: “The cards have a will of their own today.”

“What do you mean?” Dev said, furrowing her brow.

“I don’t think you’re interested in my question, are you?” Eleanora said to the cards. She looked at Dev and continued, “The Fool is not Lyse, and they know that I know this.”

“How can you—we’ve barely begun,” Dev said, her palms already slick with sweat.

“I wanted to know about Hessika’s dreams. I wanted the cards to confirm them. That’s not what’s happening here.”

“I believe you,” Dev said. “Shall we continue?”

Eleanora nodded, eyes locked on The Fool, whose borders blended with the yellow of the tablecloth, so the card appeared printed onto the lemon damask.

“Another number, please.”

“Seven,” Eleanora said.

Six cards were disregarded before Dev came to the seventh, which she flipped over to reveal The Devil. She knew this wasn’t a reference to the literal Devil, but the instinctual repulsion she felt whenever this card cropped up in one of her readings was hard to ignore.

“Another number—” Dev said.

“Seven,” Eleanora replied, interrupting Dev. “And seven again for the fourth card.”

Dev stayed her hand, uncertain.

“Are you sure?”

Eleanora nodded with vigor, but the action seemed to wear her out and she rested her head in the crook of her left arm, breathing heavily.

“Just read the cards,” Eleanora said, her voice hard. “There’s something strange going on here and I need you to do as I ask.”

Dev didn’t appreciate being snapped at, but Eleanora looked so pathetic, her pale cream blouse barely concealing her excavated collarbones and sharpened shoulder blades, that Dev let it pass without argument. Flipping over Eleanora’s next card, she set The Hierophant down on the table above The Fool and The Devil.

“Hmm,” Eleanora murmured, then watched as Dev drew the last of the chosen cards.

“The Magician,” Dev said, holding up this fourth card for Eleanora to see before laying it down on the table beneath the other three cards.

As seen from above, the cards now formed a truncated Christian cross, but one that held an empty space in its middle. This was where Dev would place the final card: a card Eleanora hadn’t consciously chosen but was a synthesis of the other four—and would be the card upon which the rest of the spread depended.

In her head, Dev totaled the number values for The Fool, The Devil, The Heirophant, and The Magician, and with this knowledge laid down the fifth and final card of the spread:

The World.

Eleanora seemed to glean the spread’s meaning instinctively, shaking her head as if she could hardly believe the audacity of the cards. Dev, on the other hand, had barely processed what she was seeing, let alone come to any conclusions.

“Well, now, isn’t that the darnedest thing,” Eleanora said, slapping the top of the table with the heel of her hand before shaking her head one more time in disbelief: “Looks as though someone has hijacked my spread.”

She sat back in her chair, her sharp eyes scanning the kitchen, looking—it seemed to Dev—for something . . . or someone.

“We’re not alone,” Eleanora said suddenly, her eyes returning to Dev’s face. “Do you feel it? Someone else is here. They won’t show themselves to me, but they’re here.”

Dev shivered. The Victorian was old and drafty, but that wasn’t what she was feeling. Eleanora was right. There was something else in the kitchen with them.

Without warning, the light outside shifted, and the room dipped into shadow. Underneath Dev’s hands, the table began to shake.

“Earthquake,” Dev said, starting to stand up—but the tremors ceased before she was fully on her feet.

Almost as abruptly as it had disappeared, sunlight flooded the kitchen again, and the room returned to normal.

“She’s left,” Eleanora said, a secret smile playing across her taut lips. “She didn’t want to be seen.”

And Dev realized she was right: Whatever spirit had been there was gone.

“Tell me what the cards say, Devandra.”

The older woman’s dark eyes bored into her own, and Dev shivered.

“Only the Innocent stands in the way of the Devil’s dominion over the World,” she began, staring down at the cards, “and the Teacher will be the one whose balance decides all of our fates.”

Dev looked up, and from the smile playing on Eleanora’s lips, it was clear the master of the Echo Park coven was well pleased with her hijacked reading.